On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 01:23:29PM +0200, Jochen Fromm wrote: > > Yes, but it does not make sense to simulate > billions of agents just for their own sake. > I guess nothing interesting will happen until > each of the billion agents is unique and > contributes something different to the same > goal - which is only possible if the goal is > clear. > > If the goal is the simulation of a city - > is a simulation of a whole city with 250,000 > agents really different from a simulation > with 2,500 agents ? The reproduction of a > whole system in a ratio of 1:1 would be a > very poor model to understand it. And how > would you specify 250,000 agents with different > preferences ?
By setting their behaviour parameters from a probability distribution. Also don't forget that geographical effects can be modelled in finer and finer detail - a few thousand similar agents in a homogenous environment probably is indistinguishable from bulk, but if you have the street plan of New York, you may need hundreds of thousands of agents before bulk effects come into play. > > -J. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Russell Standish > Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 12:47 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A billion agents > > Nobody knows until someone does the experiment. It is certainly > possible that something interesting will happen once enough agents are > simulated together. Right now it is a challenging task just to scale > the simulations up. > > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
